Thomas Willis
Thomas Willis | |
---|---|
Born | 27 January 1621 Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire |
Died | 11 November 1675 (aged 54) London |
Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
Known for | Circle of Willis |
Spouse | Mary Fell |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Anatomy Neurology Psychiatry |
Thomas Willis FRS (27 January 1621 – 11 November 1675) was an English physician who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry,[1] and was a founding member of the Royal Society.
Life
Willis was born on his parents' farm in
He maintained an
One of several Oxford cliques of those interested in science grew up around Willis and Christ Church. Besides Hooke, others in the group were Nathaniel Hodges, John Locke, Richard Lower, Henry Stubbe and John Ward.[10] (Locke went on to study with Thomas Sydenham, who would become Willis's leading rival, and who both politically and medically held some incompatible views).[11] In the broader Oxford scene, he was a colleague in the "Oxford club" of experimentalists with Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, William Petty, John Wilkins and Christopher Wren.[12] Willis was on close terms with Wren's sister Susan Holder, skilled in the healing of wounds.[13]
He and Petty were among of the physicians involved in treating Anne Greene, a woman who survived her own hanging and was pardoned because her survival was widely held to be an act of divine intervention. The event was widely written about at the time, and helped to build Willis's career and reputation.[14]
Willis lived on
Willis later worked as a physician in
According to Noga Arikha:Willis combined the physician's expert anatomical sophistication with the fluent use of an interpretive apparatus that see-sawed between novelty and tradition,
Gassendist atomism, iatrochemistry and mechanism.[20]
Among his patients was the philosopher Anne Conway, with whom he had intimate relations, but although he was consulted, Willis failed to relieve her headaches.[21]
Willis is mentioned in John Aubrey's Brief Lives; their families became linked generations later through the marriage of Aubrey's distant cousin Sir John Aubrey, 6th Baronet of Llantrithyd to Martha Catherine Carter, the grand-niece of Sir William Willys, 6th Baronet of Fen Ditton.
Research activity
Willis was a pioneer in research into the anatomy of the brain, nervous system and muscles. His most notable discovery was the "Circle of Willis", a circle of arteries on the base of the brain.
Willis's anatomy of the brain and nerves, as described in his Cerebri anatome of 1664, is minute and elaborate. This work coined the term
In 1667 Willis published Pathologicae cerebri, et nervosi generis specimen, an important work on the pathology and neurophysiology of the brain. In it he developed a new theory of the cause of epilepsy and other convulsive diseases, and contributed to the development of psychiatry. In 1672 he published the earliest English work on medical psychology, Two Discourses concerning the Soul of Brutes, which is that of the Vital and Sensitive of Man.[23] Willis could be seen as an early pioneer of the mind-brain supervenience claim prominent in present-day neuropsychiatry and philosophy of mind. Unfortunately, his enlightenment did not improve his treatment of patients; in some cases, he advocated hitting the patient over the head with sticks.[24]
Willis was the first to number the
Willis replaced Nemesius's doctrine, which had identified the ventricles of the brain as the location of cognition. He deduced that the ventricles contained cerebrospinal fluid which collected waste products from effluents. Willis recognized the cortex as the substrate of cognition and claimed that the gyrencephalia was related to a progressive incrcease in the complexity of cognition. In his functional scheme, the origin of voluntary movements was placed at the cerebral cortex while involuntary movements came from the cerebellum.[25]
He was one of the pioneers in the
Influence
Willis's work gained currency in France through the writings of
Family
By his wife, Mary Fell, Willis had five daughters and four sons, of whom four children survived early childhood. After Mary's death in 1670, he married the widow Elizabeth Calley, daughter of Matthew Nicholas, in 1672: there were no children of this marriage.[2]
Fenny Stratford church
Browne Willis, the antiquary, was son of Thomas Willis (1658–1699),[31][32][33] the eldest son of Thomas and Mary. Between 1724 and 1730, Browne Willis rebuilt St. Martin's Church on the site of the old Chantry Chapel of St. Margaret and St. Catherine at Fenny Stratford. He erected the church as a memorial to his grandfather Willis who lived in St. Martin's Lane in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London and who died on St. Martin's Day, 11 November 1675.
Works
- 1663 Diatribae duae medico-philosophicae – quarum prior agit de fermentatione on Google Books
- 1664 Cerebri anatome: cui accessit nervorum descriptio et usus
- 1667 Pathologiae Cerebri et Nervosi Generis Specimen
- 1672 De Anima Brutorum
- 1675 Pharmaceutice rationalis. Sive Diatriba de medicamentorum operationibus in humano corpore on Google Books
- 1675 A plain and easie method for preserving (by God's blessing) those that are well from the infection of the plague, or any contagious distemper, in city, camp, fleet, &c., and for curing such as are infected with it
- 1677 Pharmaceutice rationalis sive diatriba de medicamentorum operationibus in humano corpore Digital version of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf
- 1681 Clarissimi Viri Thomae Willis, Medicinae Doctoris, Naturalis Philosophiae Professoris Oxoniensis ... Opera Omnia : Cum Elenchis Rerum Et Indicibus necessariis, ut & multis Figuris aeneis Digital version of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf
- 1683 Dissertation sur les urines tirée des ouvrages de Willis Digital version
References
- ^ Moore, Norman (1900). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 25–26. . In
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29587. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b Willis, Thomas. The Galileo Project. Galileo.rice.edu. Retrieved on 17 July 2012.
- ^ S2CID 144896926.
- ISBN 006095910X, p. 54.
- ^ Nicholas Tyacke, The History of the University of Oxford: Volume IV: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (1984), p. 804.
- ISBN 0750309873, p. 20.
- ^ Restoration man. Oxford Today, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2003).
- ^ Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, HarperCollins, 2003, p. 66.
- ^ Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Walter Rüegg, A History of the University in Europe (1996), p. 547.
- ISBN 0813015707, p. 49.
- ISBN 1855067048.
- ^ BIOGRAPHIES: Susan Holder (1627-1688). She-philosopher.com (27 September 2009). Retrieved on 17 July 2012.
- ISBN 0300197683.
- S2CID 2525487.
- ^ Margery Purvey, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation, MIT Press, 1967, pp. 138–9.
- ISBN 0861932412.
- ISBN 0521558271, p. 446.
- ISBN 0954648412, p. 364.
- S2CID 57561117.
- ISBN 0791474658, p. 6.
- PMID 31844876.
- ^ Thomas Willis. Whonamedit. Retrieved on 17 July 2012.
- ^ Willis T. An Essay of the Pathology of the Brain and Nervous Stock: In Which Convulsive Diseases Are Treated Of. Pordage S, trans. London: Dring, Leigh and Harper; 1684.
- PMID 25688933.
- ^ Ocular Syndromes and Systemic Diseases: Diabetes Mellitus Archived 4 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Medrounds.org (22 March 2007). Retrieved on 17 July 2012.
- ^ Dallas, John (2011). "Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Diabetes, Doctors and Dogs: An exhibition on Diabetes and Endocrinology by the College Library for the 43rd St. Andrew's Day Festival Symposium". Archived from the original on 17 August 2011.
- ^ Roberts, Jacob (2015). "Sickening sweet". Distillations. 1 (4): 12–15. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
- ISBN 9004146636, p. 248.
- ^ A facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of the libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward Browne edited with an Introduction by J.S.Finch published by E.J.Brill Leiden 1986
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29577. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "WILLIS, Browne (1682-1760), of Whaddon Hall, Bucks. | History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
- ^ pixeltocode.uk, PixelToCode. "Thomas Willis". Westminster Abbey.
Further reading
- "Thomas Willis". Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh, 2004.
- Eduardo Punset, The Soul is in the brain, 2006.
- Kenneth Dewhurst, Thomas Willis as a Physician, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964.
- Kenneth Dewhurst, Willis's Oxford Casebook, Oxford: Sandford Publications, 1981. ISBN 0-9501528-5-4.
- H. Isler, Thomas Willis. Ein Wegbereiter der modernen Medizin, 1621–1675, Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1965.
- J.T. Hughes, Thomas Willis (1621–1675): His Life and Work, London: Royal Society of Medicine, 1991.
- M. Simonazzi, Thomas Willis e il sistema nervoso, in Id., La malattia inglese. La melanconia nella tradizione filosofica e medica dell'Inghilterra moderna, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004, pp. 185–252.
- Rengachary, Setti S; Xavier Andrew; Manjila Sunil; Smerdon Usha; Parker Brandon; Hadwan Suzan; Guthikonda Murali (2008). "The legendary contributions of Thomas Willis (1621–1675): the arterial circle and beyond". J. Neurosurg. 109 (4): 765–75. PMID 18826368.
External links
- The Willis Fleming Historical Trust
- Thomas Willis from The Galileo Project
- Munk, William (1878). The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Vol. I (2nd ed.). London. pp. 338–342.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Andrew Williams on "Thomas Willis’ Practice of Paediatric Neurology and Neurodisability." Pulse Project Podcast (23 July 2009, Oxford)